Thought Id post this for the sake of anyone who may be considering an English Shepherd and has, or is planning to have a baby. Max has been a part of our family now for going on 18 months, and the difficulties weve had with him have been fairly well documented on here; primarily these issues relate to stranger aggression, guarding and poor recall. He is also a bit of a brute both with people and other dogs, when overexcited; playing rough, jumping all over people and generally tearing around the place. Consequently Nicola and I were rather nervous to say the least about bringing a tiny baby into our home. However our baby Aria has been home with us now for two full days, and the change in Max has been remarkable. For a hound that wholeheartedly believes his tongue and paws are his best tools for demonstrating affection, he has been incredibly gentle; he has nuzzled and sniffed her many times, but has never even attempted to lick or paw her. He seems to love being near her, becomes very interested when she begins fussing before waking up and gets very stressed when she cries; this last characteristic making for an amusing episode when she began crying in her cot - Max ran over to her, surveyed the situation and then turned around to look at me with a stern expression on his face as if to say Oi you - sort this out. In reality Im probably trying too hard to humanize him here, but it made us laugh nonetheless. Its probably too early to make an informed judgement about how an English Shepherd deals with having a baby in the home, but I wanted to post this as much as anything to let you all know how proud I am of Maxs behavior over the past few days. He has always proven himself to be an adaptable dog, but neither of us expected him to respond to the enormous change in our house as well as he has done. Go Max!
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 09:16:42 +0000
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